Tango

1954

Destroys his earlier work: flags, targets, numbers

In 1954 Johns destroyed all of his previous artwork still in his possession and began painting flags, maps, targets, letters and numbers, “things the mind already knows”. Unlike the gestural abstraction of the Abstract Expressionists, these paintings could be read as both representational and abstract.

1957

A studio at Coenties Slip among fellow artists

In 1957 Johns lived in former shipping lofts on Lower Manhattan's waterfront around Coenties Slip that had been taken over by artists, alongside Rauschenberg, Robert Indiana and Ellsworth Kelly; the community also housed Agnes Martin for a time.

March 1957

Leo Castelli discovers Johns

In March 1957, while visiting Rauschenberg's studio, the dealer Leo Castelli asked to see Johns's art: on the floor below he found “a fantastic display of flags and targets” and immediately offered Johns an exhibition. According to other accounts, Castelli discovered Johns in 1958.

early 1958

First solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery

Johns's first solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, in early 1958, was well received: all but two of the eighteen works on view sold. Alfred H. Barr Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, bought three paintings, the first works by Johns to enter a museum collection; the trustees feared attacks by patriotic groups over Flag, so Barr arranged for the architect Philip Johnson to buy it and donate it to the museum in 1973.